Child of the Woods by Susi Gott Séguret

Author:Susi Gott Séguret
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hatherleigh Press
Published: 2019-01-29T13:09:12+00:00

Old Time Religion

“Gimme that old-time religion,

Gimme that old-time religion,

Gimme that old-time religion,

It’s good enough for me.”

When my parents first moved into Shelton Laurel, they were invited to sing in the Baptist Church—provided they bring the banjo along, of course.

Hymns being a large part of the repertoire of mountain music, it was no problem to come up with songs like “I’ll Fly Away,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Somebody Touched Me,” and even a rousing spiritual sung to the tune of “Mountain Dew.” One of the region’s best guitar flat-pickers was part of the Baptist Church too, and, although he had laid down the playing of secular tunes, he put all the punch and fire he had into the picking of the hymns.

This formula of Sunday entertainment continued until the preacher started jumping up and down and pointing at my parents, shouting out that they must be saved or perish forever in hellfire and damnation. At that time my parents quietly dropped out of the weekly ritual, to observe the day of rest in their own way.

It was a pattern among many of the mountain men to sow their wild oats well when they were boys, and then settle down and “get religion” in their ripe old age, ensuring themselves entrance to the Pearly Gates when they should die. Many of our neighbors had made moonshine, raced up and down the creek at night in their souped-up cars, gotten in fights, maybe even killed a man or two, and served their time in the pen (the penitentiary). When they were free again and had gotten “all that foolishness” out of their system, they married and had a nice family, went to revivals, got saved, and preached the gospel to anybody who would listen. They also had some pretty savory stories to tell, if you could ever get them off the gospel.

One such neighbor was a tall, lean man with a wife at least three times his size. He’d joke with Daddy (after the first round of religious patter was spent), “Yeah, I got several women in one skin…and she’s all mine!”

When we had electricity brought up to our house, after years of canning food and trimming lamp wicks, Daddy bought a refrigerator from this couple. When he asked the wife to whom he should make out the check, she replied, “Why, hit don’t matter, Pete; what’s his is mine ’n’ what’s mine is mine, too!”

The husband, who was standing by with his hands plunged into his overall pockets, chuckled and added, “Yeah, Pete, when we got married hit was for better or worse. She couldn’-a done no better, ’n’ I couldn’-a done no worse!”

Daddy heard a good share of this couple’s humor when he built a log house for them, replacing the faded pink house trailer that had been their home for years. The lanky husband was especially endowed with a gift for sly commentary. When Daddy showed him how to hew a log, splitting a pencil line down the middle, leaving

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